Last Week!

Well, it is the last week of my internship. I didn't write a blog last week because there was nothing really to talk about! I have finished my projects for the semester, and all I have left is getting my hours in. I have a presentation tomorrow on all I have done this semester, and I think I will be all right with it. Well, that's about all. It's been a great semester, and I met some wonderful people. I am hoping that I will be able to keep volunteering with the Public History Center, depending on my schedule this summer. This has been a great experience and really helped me cement my desire to work in a museum, and how interesting and fun I find working in archives. That's All Folks!

Two Weeks Left

Well, like I said before, we are nearing the end. On Friday the 18th we will have our showcase with all the other interns to show what we have done this semester. I am pretty much done with the work that has been assigned to me, but I still need enough hours that I will be coming in the next two Tuesdays for a few hours, along with Thursday and Friday to get some extra hours in. Everybody here has been so nice and welcoming, I'll be sad when I leave. Hopefully I will have time over the summer to just drop by and volunteer a little bit.

Nearing the end!

Well, it's the end of March now, and I am expected to present what I have done during my internship within three to four weeks. Considering I'm only here for ten hours a week, that is not a lot of time to finish everything up! Professor Sample is pleased though with everything I have gotten done so far as I have finished everything she majorly wanted done. The rest is just icing on top of the cake according to her, even if it doesn't feel that way to me. I have to make a PowerPoint explaining my job so that the intern who comes next will know how to do what I have been doing. While I feel that accessioning artifacts into PastPerfect is simple once you know how, it's a tad bit difficult to explain with just words and screenshots. So creating the PowerPoint is taking up time that I could be spending doing other things, but then again, isn't the PowerPoint going to make things run smoother and faster for future interns if I do it right? I guess it's a catch-22 - go quick to get my own work done faster, or be slower and more detailed to make future intern's work go quicker?

It's a New Day

Hello again everyone! I'm back at work after taking Thursday off, and working hard is my plan for today! I have been accessioning items at random based on what I thought was most important, but now I am focusing on one area at a time, and today I will finish at least the front desk items if not more. It feels so good to have a plan in place, especially one that I can conceivably finish!

Live after Five!

Hello again world! Checking back in after a wonderful spring break, to find out that Sanford held on Thursday a monthly event named Live After Five. This i like a huge block party, that I was a part of working at the PHC table over in the KidZone! We made Saint Patrick's Day headdresses and pictures of Shamrocks! On top of that, coming back to internship after spring break had a huge surprise over in the archives room! Professor Sample had found in a teaching trunk a 1906 Kodak Folding Camera and an old candlestick telephone! They are going to go into the Turn of the Century Classroom now that I have accessioned them!

Shirley!

This post is dedicated to the wonderful Shirley! Shirley is a long time volunteer at the Public History Center - at least 15 years working here. She is the one who taught me how to use PastPerfect, and has helped with with a million tiny details since I started my internship. She is one of the sweetest and most caring women I have ever met - everyone who works here has been absurdly nice and awesome, and I would just like to give my thanks. Last week I used a scanner for the first time in years and had no trouble at all with it! Success! I also noticed a packaging error in our collections toolkit. The collections toolkit is full of our supplies for writing accession numbers on artifacts. There are a number of different acrylics, and solutions, and things with names like B-72 or N-67. While reading through the how-to manual, I realized that we had double the N-67 and none of the B-72! It just goes to show that everybody can make a mistake when putting together a kit, and that having good observational skills will help you with life in the long run.

Accessioning post #2

Remember how in the last post I said I learned how to accession? Not quite true. I learned how to put my inventory into the computer, but there is more to it! With every item put into PastPerfect, they are given a number. Which you then have to in one way or another label the artifact with. I have spent the last two weeks putting things into PastPerfect but then also labeling each artifact with what I've started calling its "SM" number. (All accession numbers start with SM - standing for Student Museum). It is taking awhile and leading to me having several projects at once. I mean, you can't just sharpie the SM number onto the artifact! With papery substances you can just write with a pencil, but I haven't had anything papery come through yet. So instead we paint on a clear coat of protective almost nail polish-like substance, which is then covered in white acrylic paint, which I can finally write the SM number on! To make sure each coat of paint is dry, I leave a day in between each coat, making it take much longer to write the SM number on each artifact. Maybe I'll start leaving just an hour or two between each coat. We will just see what the future holds!

Hello All! It's been another great week at the Sanford Public History Center! I only have one bookshelf left to inventory, but that includes well over 60 books. But I will get through it! Today was very exciting, because I learnt how to accession objects into PastPerfect! I had watched videos on how earlier in the semester, but it is much more intricate than the video showed. I did my first accession on a Model B Balopticon. That is basically a projector - this one made in 1911. I have a feeling it will take me much longer to accession everything into PastPerfect than it took to make an inventory list of all the objects in the room. But that just means that I will have enough work to finish up the semester with!

Good afternoon world! Last week's internship was pretty amazing. Remember my mentioning how we now have some 1916 light switches? With some help, we were able to start researching on the company that created them. It was the George Cutter Co. That caused me some trouble when researching because on the switches it just says Cutter Company. After figuring out that hiccup though we were able to find out some amazing things about the creator of the Cutter Company - George Cutter. He worked for the company that produced the FIRST Alexander Graham Bell telephone. He also was sent to Russia as a representative of the Alexander Graham Bell's telephone company. He did some other fun things before creating the George Cutter Company in 1905, which 11 years later would create the light switches. I'm also almost done with the cleaning and inventory of the 1902 classroom. After that I will learn how to accession all the necessary artifacts. The only hiccup in that is finding out what is considered an artifact and what is considered a prop. Since this is an educational museum full of children, most objects that might otherwise be put into archives and preserved are left out for children to see and touch and learn about the past from. It is something we are torn about. Having children learn and learn to love history through our museum is great. But when you see a 70 year old book left out in the open when you feel it should be preserved and left just for historians in gloves to touch...

New Discoveries at the PHC!

Hello All! This is Week #2 of my jnternship at the Sanford Public History Center in the archives. This week was a bit exciting because we made some discoveries! The first discovery was a bunch of old light switches dating back to 1916, back when then electricity was first put into the building. Although painted over and the electrician who was putting in the new fixtures didn't treat it like a historical object, you can still see that parts of it are brass, porcelain, and the buttons had a mother of pearl overlay. My job will be to look up more information on these fixtures and the company that made them. Exciting! I get to research instead of dusting and inventorying - very important work, but tedious after a few hours. The second big discovery was made by yours truly! Today I had a terrible headache, and was trying to looking to see what work I had in my future instead of doing work in the present and while looking through drawers I found some old photos! Well, they aren't quite photos. I don't know much about them, and while Dave who works (Interns?) there gave me an explanation, as did Shirley (Intern), it went over my head. They are these old glass plated "photos". Maybe negatives. They go into this big camera that Dave called a "Brownie". And they project onto a screen? I'm not sure what happens after you place the glass negative into the slot. But I found inside of a card catalogue at least 50 of these! I'm going to push to make them a priority if possible, because if they aren't taken care of, the picture can be distorted. And being left in a cupboard basically since 1984 is not taking care of them well. Speaking of card catalogues, any of my readers old enough to remember them? I was around 7-10 years old when my local library went over to computers. I know how to use them, but barely remember actually having to! Last of my exciting news about this week - I made my own lunch! That may seem very normal to others, but I felt very accomplished making my own sandwich instead of buying one from subway. My plan for next week is to either pre-make a casserole or a soup for lunch and microwave it. I know that this blog is supposed to be about my internship, but I feel that it is also about me finding my way in life - my calling for my professional career and way to becoming an adult. Making lunch is my way of showing that this internship is changing me for the better, even if so far in a small way - making lunch. Till next week everybody!

Hello Sanford Public History Center

Hello world! This is Shannon Leavey! I just created this new blog to share in the wonders of my amazing new internship at the Sanford Public History Center. (http://publichistorycenter.cah.ucf.edu/)

This is an educational museum with ties to my university, the University of Central Florida (Go Knights!) Here's a little background information on the Center, before we get into the exciting news of my actual job at my internship.

The Public History Center started out as a public school in 1902, before switching over to only being a grammar school in 1911. in 1916 they added on the east and west wings to the building, effectively tripling the size of the school. The building itself is considered Romanesque. In 1984 the school was shut down before turning into the Public History Center we all know and love today.

My internship focuses on the museum part of the Sanford Public History Center, instead of the educational aspect. I have been gifted with the assignment of being the collections archivist for the Turn of the Century Classroom. This is a classroom set up to look like an original classroom from when the school first opened in 1902.

Now, I am sure you are wondering, "What do they mean by collections?" along with "What do archivists even do?" Well my wondering blog readers, those are excellent questions! We will start with the first question. When somebody says they are working with/in collections, they are referring to (As my immediate superior, Professor Betty White, says ) "3-D" objects. This is anything from lamps, to toys, to machines. This is in contrast to archivists who work with papers, which includes documents, blueprints, maps, photographs, and more.

Your second question, "What does an archivist do?" has a two-fold answer. Archivists care for and accession the artifacts. To care for artifacts, they must be cleaned (mostly with just a dry dusting cloth) and properly stored in a container that will not allow pollutants or light in, and that is made up of materials that will not break down over time, and have a pH level around 7. My next post will tell about the wonders of dusting in fine detail. For now, I will give an overview of accessioning objects. The Public History Center uses a database called PastPerfect. On here you can upload pictures of the objects, give a description, ascribe the object a  number so it is easily re-found, and more that I have not even learned yet.

That's all for now everybody. I hope you had a wonderful weekend, and I will talk to you soon!